UTTERLY IRRELEVANT.

  Trilby: George Du Maurier's novel of Parisian artistic life, Trilby, was serialized in the U.S. in Harper's Weekly in early 1894. The book version, illustrated by Du Maurier himself, appeared later that year. Trilby is an artist's model who loves Little Billee, an artist of a higher social class. Some years later, Little Billee sees her singing on the stage, though she had never been able to carry a tune before. Her voice is the result of hypnotism by the evil Svengali; when he dies, Trilby dies also.

The book was immensely popular; it helped shape the image of the bohemian artistic life in Paris, gave the name of trilby to a kind of hat, and the name of Svengali to hypnotists and sinister star-makers. It was made into a play by Paul Potter (1895) and into movies—shorts in 1896 and 1898—and feature films in 1914 (Britain), 1915 and 1923 (U.S.), 1927 (Germany, as Svengali), 1931 (U.S., with John Barrymore), and 1954 (Britain, as Svengali).

  Pastels in Prose: Pastels in Prose (1890) was an anthology of contemporary French prose writers, translated by Stuart Merrill, and with an introduction by William Dean Howells. Daudet, Huysman, Baudelaire, Mallarmé, and Judith Gautier were some of the authors included. The collection introduced the idea of the prose poem to English, where it was taken up by such writers as Oscar Wilde and Ernest Dowson, and influenced later surrealist and symbolist writers.

Cather borrowed the phrase for a series of satirical sketches in The Hesperian, the student paper she edited 1893-94. One of the sketches, recognizably that of Roscoe Pound, led to a breach with her friend Louise Pound and the entire Pound family.

  Great essayists: Cather may be referring to such English writers as Bacon, Addison and Steele, Lamb, and De Quincy, and such French essayists as Montaigne, Diderot, and Joubert.

  Pauline Hall: Singer, dancer, and actress Pauline Hall (1860-1919) was born Pauline Schmidgall in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she made her stage debut in 1876 as a ballet dancer. She played in Mary Anderson's company for a time before joining Edward Rice's company. She created the role of Erminie in the 800-performance run at the Casino Theatre in New York in 1885; later (c. 1892) she organized her own company. She married and divorced both Edward White and George B. McClellan, jr.

Cather refers to a picture of Pauline Hall in tights in book II, ch. 11 in The Song of the Lark, and the Moonstone Orchestra plays selections from Erminie (book I, ch. 8) at a town concert.

Images at Google Books and University of Washington Digital Library.

  Dorcas: Dorcas, an operetta (or "operatic comedy," as it was sometimes described), was written by Harry and Edward Paulton and produced in 1894. Pauline Hall toured with it for several years, as did a few other companies.

  Theatrical Tidings: The Theatrical Tidings, a theatrical newspaper, merged with Jerome Eddy's Weekly Squibb to become the Weekly Squibb and Theatrical Tidings in November 1897.

  Jeanette St. Henry: Soprano Jeannette St. Henry was featured in the original cast of Wang (1891) with De Wolf Hopper and Della Fox, and played Donna Inez in their Panjandrum in 1893. She also played in the cast of Gustave Kerker's Kismet when it opened in New York in August 1895. In 1896 she was playing in one of Hoyt's farces, A Black Sheep.

  DeWolf Hopper: William DeWolf Hopper (1858-1935) made his stage debut in 1878. At 6 feet 2 inches he was considered too tall for serious acting roles, and his big bass singing voice drew him to musical theater; he starred in The Black Hussar in 1885, and had his first pairing with Della Fox in Castles in the Air in 1890, followed by Wang in 1891 and Panjandrum in 1893; he starred in many more Broadway shows. One of his most popular acts was his recitation of Thayer's poem, "Casey at the Bat," which he helped to make popular; he recited it at curtain calls, recorded it in 1906, and performed it in a silent movie in 1916, and on the radio.

Hopper married six times, most notably to actress Elda Furry, best known as the feared gossip columnist Hedda Hopper. His son by her, William DeWolf Hopper, Jr., played Paul Drake on the 1950s Perry Mason televion series.

  Mr. James Aldrich Libby: Singer James Aldrich Libby (c. 1872-1925) made the song, "After the Ball," a hit, selling over five million copies of the sheet music, when he sang it in Hoyt's comedy, A Trip to Chinatown in 1893.

  William Broderick: Actor and singer William Broderick (1859-1904) appeared frequently in light opera; he played the father of the heroine in DeKoven's The Fencing Master.

William Broderick married another singer, Emma Kraus; their daughter, Helen Broderick Crawford, also an actress, was the mother of motion picture and television actor Broderick Crawford.

  Kate Davis: Actress and singer Kate Davis (c. 1850-1901) was in Frohman's company in 1891, in Belasco's Miss Helyett which marked the debut of Mrs. Leslie Carter. However, Frohman found Davis difficult to get along with and dismissed her; she sued for breach of contract.

  Charles Bradshaw: Actor Charles H. Bradshaw toured with Lotta in the early 1880s, and played with Fanny Rice c. 1890-91. He played in Frohman’s company for many years. After the failure of two plays he appeared in in 1903 he went into vaudeville, returning to the legitimate stage in 1910 for a revival of Sherlock Holmes with William Gillette in 1910.

Charles Bradshaw appeared in an early short film, of a scene from Old Kentucky (1900).

Image at University of Louisville Digital Library.

  The Funke: The Funke Opera House was built in 1885 by Fred Funke (d. 1890), a Lincoln wholesale cigar, wine, and liquor dealer, on the southwest corner of 12th and O St. Until the Lansing Theatre was built it was the largest and finest theater in town. The first manager was Ed A. Church (d. 1927), followed by Robert McReynolds; Frank Zehrung managed it briefly, from July 1889 to January 1890, when L. M. Crawford took over. Zehrung resumed management in 1894. The building housed shops on the ground floor and offices in parts of the upper floors, as well as the theater itself. The Funke Opera House, Lincoln, Nebraska, late nineteenth century.

  soubrette: The soubrette in a play is the role of a pert, coquettish character, often a maidservant or the comic friend of the heroine; the name was often given to actresses who played such roles.

  Miss Anna Boyd:

Anna Boyd (d. 1916) appeared in several of Hoyt's productions in the late 1880s and early 1890s; perhaps her most famous and most successful role was as the Widow in Hoyt's A Trip to Chinatown (1892).

Of an earlier production, Zig Zag (1888), the New York Times reviewer said, "Of the ladies in the cast, Miss Anna Boyd is easily the premiere acrobat. Her dancing and her brick bat throwing are the essence of energy and accuracy, while her girlish simplicity is in an indirect ratio to her matronly development" (19 February 1889).

Boyd married actor Joe Coyne in 1898; they were divorced in 1909.

  A Trip to Chinatown: In Charles Hoyt's musical "A Trip to Chinatown", Mrs. Guyer, a widow from Chicago, comes to San Francisco and fosters romance among several young couples with the help of a rich man's lost wallet. The song, "The Bowery" (music by Percy Gaunt, words by Charles Hoyt), was one of the first big Broadway show tune hits. Later the song "After the Ball" was added; the two songs came to exemplify two dominant strains of the 1890s stage, the slightly naughty and the overtly sentimental. This was Charles Hoyt's biggest success. It toured the country for nearly a year before opening on Broadway in 1891, where it ran for a record-breaking 657 performances—a record that would not be broken for nearly thirty years. It toured the country for years after.

A 1912 musical, A Winsome Widow, was based on the play, and later commentators have seen many echoes of the plot in the mid-twentieth century hit, Hello, Dolly!

Playbill: http://www.musicals101.com/News/chinatownpbl.jpg

  Mamie Mayo: No actress named Mamie or Margaret Mayo is listed in the indexes to Odell's Annals of the New York Stage or the New York Times drama reviews for this period. She appeared in Lincoln, Nebraska, in The Hustler on October 24, 1894.

  Charley's Aunt: This farce by Brandon Thomas (d. 1914) opened in London in 1892, and in New York October 2, 1893. Two Oxford undergraduates in love need a chaperone for an intimate lunch with their sweethearts. When Charley's aunt from Brazil is delayed, they press a fellow undergraduate into the role, complicated when the real aunt arrives unexpectedly.

The play has been a favorite, especially for amateur and small professional productions ever since it was written. It was made into a silent film in 1925 starring Syd Chaplin; an early talkie in 1930, starring Charles Ruggles; another film in 1941 starring Jack Benny and Kay Francis; a musical, "Where's Charley" starring Ray Bolger, and a Playhouse 90 television production.

  Mr. Francisque Sarcey: French critic Francisque Sarcey (1827-1899) began his career as a journalist in Paris in 1858 and his career as a drama critic the following year. His "Feuilletons" in Le Temps, beginning in 1867, established him as the most important drama critic in France; he was particularly interested in acting (he reviewed Sarah Bernhardt's debut) and in stage presentation, rather than the drama as literature. His Souvenirs d'âge mur (1892) was translated into English in 1893.

  Zolaism: In literature, naturalism, or Zolaism, was the form of literary realism that depicted the lives and environment of the poorest people. It was named for its most famous exponent, Emile Zola (1840-1902).

  realistic school: William Dean Howells was the leading American exponent of a school of realism that paid close attention to the details of the ordinary lives of middle-class people. Another form of realism—now generally called naturalism—which focused on the lives of the poor was emerging into prominence in the 1890s; Zola was its French leader.

  two of the best dramatic critics: Possibly Andrew Carpenter Wheeler, who began writing drama criticism for the World in the 1870s, and Louis De Foe, who had begun his career in Chicago, and who wrote for the World until about 1920, when he was succeeded by later distinguished drama critics like Alexander Woollcott and Heywood Broun.

  Meg Merrilles: "Meg Merrilies" was a general by-line for several women reporters for the New York World in the early 1890s who did stunt reporting, such as going into a lion's den or investigating workers' conditions in the bridge foundations under the East River. According to Jean Marie Lutes, the by-line was meant to keep other women reporters on the staff, such as Nell Nelson, from achieving the fame and influence that Nellie Bly had ("Into the Mad-house With Nellie Bly: Girl Stunt-Reporting in Late Nineteenth Century America," American Quarterly 54.2 [2002], 240).

Meg Merrilies was the name of the gypsy woman in Sir Walter Scott's Guy Mannering.

  Nelly Bly: American journalist Elizabeth Jane Cochran (1864-1922) was born in Pennsylvania. Her family moved to Pittsburgh in 1880 after her father's death and her mother's divorce from an abusive second husband. She was given a job on the Pittsburgh Despatch after she refuted a columnist's claim that women were unsuited to the work; the editors gave her the byline "Nellie Bly" after the girl in a Stephen Foster song. She did investigative reporting on the conditions of the poor, but the editors kept steering her to the traditional woman's page reporting. After six months of reporting in Mexico, she went to New York in 1887, and finally got a job with the New York World. Her first famous assignment was going undercover to investigate conditions at the Women's Lunatic Asylum on Blackwell's Island; her most famous "stunt" was going around the world without a male escort in seventy-two days, beating the fictional Phineas Fogg's eighty days. She opened the way for other "girl stunt reporters" to get out of the traditional women's department on newspapers. Bly married Robert Seaman in 1894 and retired from journalism in favor of manufacturing boilers and barrels (on which she held a patent) until 1913, after her husband's death.

  All that may become a man: In Shakespeare's Macbeth, Act I, scene 7, Macbeth has second thoughts, in the speech beginning, "If it were done when 'tis done, 'twere well / It were done quickly," about actually killing Duncan to gain the throne. However, Lady Macbeth enters and calls him a coward; Macbeth replies, "I dare do all that may become a man; / Who dares do more is none."

  James J. Corbett: American boxer James J. Corbett (1866-1933) was born in San Francisco, where he began to make his name as a boxer, first as an amateur middleweight. He became heavyweight champion in 1892, when he knocked out champion John L. Sullivan in the twenty-first round, in the first championship fight under Marquess of Queensbury rules, with three-minute rounds and padded leather gloves. He made his first defense of his world heavyweight boxing title on January 25, 1894, against Charles Mitchell, the English champion. Corbett, using his speed and knowledge of his opponent, helped to make boxing a 'scientific' contest, instead of a brute force fight. However, he lost his championship in 1897 to Bob Fitzsimmons. Several of his fights were filmed, including an exhibition match for Thomas Edison's kinetograph in 1894.

Corbett was known as "Gentleman Jim" because of his good looks, education, and manners; he used his fame to go on stage, playing the lead in Shaw's Cashel Byron's Profession, and later into films. He divorced his first wife, Olive Lake, in 1895 and married actress Vera Stanwood (born Jessie Taylor) that same year. His autobiography, The Roar of the Crowd, was published in 1924; Hollywood made a movie of his life, Gentleman Jim, starring Errol Flynn, in 1942.

James J. Corbett

  Emma Calve: Singer Emma Calvé, born Rosa Emma Calvet (1858-1942), was born in France and brought up in Spain. She studied under influential voice teacher Mathilde Marchesi, and made her debut in Brussels in 1882. She sang in Paris before making her London debut in 1892, where she sang Carmen; she became the greatest Carmen of her time. Calvé was also famous in the role of Santuzza in Pietro Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana (1890). She retired in 1925 to teach. Her autobiography is I Have Sung Under Every Sky (1937).

  a singer in Paris: The singer has not been identified, though she presumably had personal ties to Cather.

  The Nebraska State Journal: The Nebraska State Journal was founded in 1867 by Charles H. Gere as the Nebraska Commonwealth, a solidly Republican newspaper. It became the leading paper in Lincoln for many years, finally merging with its rival, the Lincoln Star, in 1995. The managing editor for many years was Will Owen Jones; other employees whom Cather knew were Walt Mason, A. L. Bixby, and printer Flora Bullock, a classmate and the first bibliographer of Cather's journalism.

Charles Gere's wife, Mariel Clapham Gere, and their daughters Mariel, Frances, and Ellen, were long-time friends of Cather.

  The Dramatic Mirror: The New York Dramatic Mirror began as the New York Mirror in 1879 and assumed this name in 1889; millionaire Harrison Grey Fiske (1861-1942) became editor at the age of 18, and sold it in 1918. By then it had become the Dramatic Mirror of Stage and Motion Pictures and survived under variants of that name until 1922.

  glories that were Greece and the grandeur that was Rome: The second verse of Edgar Allan Poe's poem, "To Helen," praises her classic beauty, and says,

Thy hyacinth hair, thy classic face, Thy Naiad airs, have brought me home To the glory that was Greece And the grandeur that was Rome.

  Lady Windermere's Fan: In the first of Oscar Wilde's witty comedies, produced in 1893, the young Lady Windermere objects to her husband's relationship to Mrs. Erlynne, not realizing that Mrs. Erlynne is her divorced (and therefore socially disgraced) mother. Lady Windermere runs away to an admirer, Lord Darlington: Mrs. Erlynne follows her to persuade her not to take such a disastrous step. Lord Windermere comes to Darlington's unexpectedly and recognizes his wife's fan, but Mrs. Erlynne saves her daughter and disgraces herself again by claiming the fan as her own.

  Trilby: George Du Maurier's novel of Parisian artistic life, Trilby, was serialized in the U.S. in Harper's Weekly in early 1894. The book version, illustrated by Du Maurier himself, appeared later that year. Trilby is an artist's model who loves Little Billee, an artist of a higher social class. Some years later, Little Billee sees her singing on the stage, though she had never been able to carry a tune before. Her voice is the result of hypnotism by the evil Svengali; when he dies, Trilby dies also.

The book was immensely popular; it helped shape the image of the bohemian artistic life in Paris, gave the name of trilby to a kind of hat, and the name of Svengali to hypnotists and sinister star-makers. It was made into a play by Paul Potter (1895) and into movies—shorts in 1896 and 1898—and feature films in 1914 (Britain), 1915 and 1923 (U.S.), 1927 (Germany, as Svengali), 1931 (U.S., with John Barrymore), and 1954 (Britain, as Svengali).

  Immanuel Kant: Philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was born in East Prussia, where he lived all his life. His early work was in the sciences, especially in astronomy, but turned increasingly to philosophy and logic in the 1760s. His essay, "Observations on the Feeling of the Sublime and the Beautiful" (1764) had a profound impact on the development of Romanticism. Perhaps his most important work was the Critique of Pure Reason (1781), which, despite its difficulty, eventually established Kant as the most important philosopher of the eighteenth century.

  Ruskin: British art and social critic John Ruskin (1819-1900) was influential in many areas of Victorian life and thought. In an age when access to works of art was limited, his writing sought to convey the visual and emotional qualities of the works he discussed. His Modern Painters (1843 and 1846) led to public appreciation of the work of J. M. W. Turner and the Pre-Raphaelites. His Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) and The Stones of Venice (1853) did the same for Gothic architecture, and led to the founding of such organizations as the National Trust and the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings. As a social critic (and socialist), Ruskin was also influential in the trade union and arts and crafts movements.

Ruskin was also a poet and artist himself, as well as a writer of such fantasies as The King of the Golden River (1841).

  Thackeray: William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863), English novelist and essayist, was born in India, and educated in England. He lost the fortune he had inherited from his father as a young man, and became a professional journalist. The serial publication of his most famous novel, Vanity Fair (1847-48), set in Regency England during the Napoleonic wars, established him as an author. It was followed by another historical novel, Henry Esmond (1852), the semi-autobiographical Pendennis (1848), and The Newcomes (1855). He was also a successful lecturer, touring the United States with talks that would later become The English Humorists of the Eighteenth Century (1853) and The Four Georges (1860). He founded the Cornhill Magazine in 1860 and was its editor until his death.

  George Meredith: English novelist and poet George Meredith (1828-1909) was the son of a tailor, but small family legacies enabled him to acquire some formal education in England and in Germany by the time he was sixteen. He had an early unhappy marriage (which eventually gave him material for some of his best poetry in Modern Love in 1863) and a long struggle for financial independence and artistic recognition. His first novel to achieve recognition was The Ordeal of Richard Feverel (1859), followed by Evan Harrington, or, He Would Be a Gentleman (1860); The Egoist (1879) and Diana of the Crossways (1885) established his popularity and reputation as a writer of brilliant romantic and psychological comedies and creator of complex, spirited women. His last three novels were published in 1891, 1894 and 1895; by then he was widely acknowledged as the greatest living British novelist.

  William Dean Howells: William Dean Howells (1837-1920), American novelist, critic, and editor, grew up in Ohio. He became assistant editor (1865), then editor (1871-1881) of The Atlantic Monthly, and then of Harper's New Monthly Magazine (1886-1892 and 1899-1909) where he was a publisher and champion of literary realism and of writers such as Henry James, Mark Twain, Stephen Crane, Frank Norris, Sarah Orne Jewett, and Charles Chesnutt, as well as European writers such as Ibsen, Zola, and Tolstoy. His first novels were about middle-class life, followed by international novels of manners, then by novels examining current social problems; A Modern Instance (1882), The Rise of Silas Lapham (1885), and A Hazard of New Fortunes (1890) are some of his best-known works.

  Sordello: The thirteenth-century poet and troubadour, Sordello, was born in Mantua. Little is known of his life beyond official papers documenting his difficulties with the law or his association with patrons such as Charles of Anjou—or both: while in Verona at the court of Richard of Bonifazio in 1226, he abducted Richard's wife and was forced to flee to Provence. Some of his poetry survives, but he is best known now because he was praised by Dante, and appears as a character in the Purgatorio.

Robert Browning's poem, Sordello (1840), was based on the turbulent life of the poet. The perceived obscurity of his language helped to give him a reputation as a difficult poet—an intellectual's poet.

  Sordello clubs: Many clubs devoted to the study of Robert Browning's poetry sprang up in America in the 1870s and 1880s. Although it is unlikely that many clubs devoted themselves entirely to his poem, Sordello (1840), Louise Greer, in Browning and America (1952), noted that at least one Browning club started with Sordello and spent three years trying to explicate it.

  Verona: Verona, in northern Italy, was a city long before its conquest by the Romans in 300 BC. Its wealth derived from its strategic position on a number of trade roads. Its medieval political history was turbulent, with external warfare and internal, and even fratricidal, strife.

Dante, Petrarch, and Giotto were associated with Verona, and the city is the setting for Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet.

  Sleep and forget, Sordello: At the end of Browning's poem, Sordello (1840), the narrator says,

And thus bereft Sleep and forget, Sordello . . . in effect He sleeps, the feverish poet—I suspect Not utterly companionless.

  penitentiary: The Nebraska State Penitentiary was then south of Lincoln. Alexandra Bergson visits the penitentiary in O Pioneers! It is possible Cather had visited it herself, given these and other references, but no record has been found of her doing so. The Nebraska State Penitentiary, Lincoln, Nebraska, circa 1909.

  Beemerville: Cather refers to the Nebraska State Penitentiary after its warden, Allen D. Beemer, rather than the town of Beemer, Nebraska, which Beemer founded in 1886.

  G. W. Murdock: No record of an actor of this name has been found.

  unprofessional citizen: Actors referred to acting as "the profession," so Cather refers to ordinary citizens as "unprofessionals." Long hair in men was a sign of artistic pretensions.

  New York Clipper: The New York Clipper—later shortened to The Clipper— was begun by Frank Queen in 1853; it was a weekly trade paper specializing in entertainment, especially the circus and the theater, the performing arts, and sports (it dropped sports coverage in 1894, however). The paper was absorbed by Variety in 1924.

  Robert Downing: Robert Downing (1857-1944) appeared in minor roles Mary Anderson's company in New York by 1880; by 1882 he was playing leading roles with her, such as Claude in Lady of Lyons. When Anderson left for London, Downing played with Joseph Jefferson's company between 1883 and 1888. Odell first notes his appearance in New York as Spartacus in The Gladiator in 1886 (Annals of the New York Stage, XIII: 230), and return engagements thereafter, saying that Downing was "trying to be a Forrest" (XIII: 459). He was best known for his physique as displayed in the lead role of such plays as The Gladiator. Downing's basic repertoire in the early 1890s consisted of The Gladiator, Virginius, Ingomar, Damon and Pythias, Julius Caesar, and Richard the Lion-Hearted.

Image available at the New York Public Library Digital Gallery.

  Miss Eugenia Blair: Eugenie Blair (c. 1868-1922) was born in South Carolina, but made her professional debut in Chicago. She toured with the D.P. Powers and James O'Neill companies, and then played supporting roles in Frederick B. Warde's company in the mid-1880s, winning modest praise in the New York Times reviews. By 1888 she was playing in Robert Downing's company; they were married by 1891, and divorced by 1910. She continued active in the theater, performing character roles on Broadway as she aged. She died after suffering a heart attack backstage during a performance of Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie (1921), for which she created the role of Marthy. Blair's daughter was actress Eleanor Montell.

Image at: Google Books.

  Frank Lindon: Actor Frank Lindon and his company played the Count of Monte Cristo in smaller cities in the U.S. This may be the actor-manager Frank Linden (1851-1911) listed in Stage Death. A Frank P. Lindon was touring in Utah in 1903.

Cather recalled seeing Lindon in Monte Cristo in her letter to the Omaha World-Herald lamenting the loss of small-town opera houses in 1929. She said, "When old Frank Lindon in a frilled shirt and a velvet coat blazing with diamonds . . . revealed his identity to . . . his faithless Mercedes, . . . [he] raised his eyebrows, permitted his lip to curl, and said softly and bitterly, 'A fidelity of six months!' then we children were not in the opera house in Red Cloud we were in Mme Danglars' salon in Paris, in the middle of lives so very different from our own" (Bohlke 187).

  John Griffith: Actor John Griffith (c. 1860-1911) began his acting career in Edwin Booth's company when he was 16; he also played with Thomas Keene and Richard Mansfield. He formed his own road company, playing in smaller cities and specializing in tragedies and Shakespearean roles; he was forced to file for bankruptcy in 1903. He had just completed a tour with his new company at the time of his death (obituary, New York Times, 26 November, 1911).

  Faust: Part one of Goethe's verse drama was published in 1808, the second shortly before his death in 1832. In it Goethe presents Faust as a romantic hero, a seeker after knowledge who is ultimately purified and saved from damnation. Goethe's Faust inspired many other 19th century versions, including a cantata by Hector Berlioz (1846) and an opera by Charles Gounod (1859). Later versions tended to focus more on the love story between Faust and Marguerite.

Lawrence Fossler, professor of German at the University of Nebraska, presented a series of lectures, "Goethe and Faust," in the fall of 1891 which Cather, then a freshman, may have attended. In "Old Mrs. Harris," the young Vickie Templeton looks at a German edition of Goethe's Faust and wishes she could read it (Obscure Destinies 90).

  Common-law marriage: Common-law marriage, or "marriage by habit and repute," is a form of marriage by mutual consent but without governmental license or religions solemnization. The man and woman must consider themselves and be known to be husband and wife—simple cohabitation is not sufficient. Common-law marriages have the same legal obligations as state-sanctioned marriages.

  Warden Allan D. Beemer: Allan D. Beemer (1842-after 1904) was born in Pennsylvania, and served four years with the Eleventh Pennsylvania Cavalry in the Civil War. He came to West Point, Nebraska, in 1868, engaging in real estate and livestock, as well as serving as sheriff of Cumming County for six years. In 1886 he founded the town of Beemer and its bank. He served as warden of the Nebraska State Penitentiary from 1893-95, and again in 1902-1904. He was preceded by James P. Mallon (1893) and D. H. Hopkins (1892). The Nebraska report in the 1895 Report of the Conference of Charities and Correction noted that the prison had made steady progress in the improvement of conditions under Warden Beemer.

Beemer married Belle Akerley in 1873.

  Rudyard Kipling: Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936) was born in Bombay, India; he was educated in England, first in a foster home (an experience rendered in "Baa Baa, Black Sheep" [1888]) and then at boarding school (Stalky & Co. [1899]). He returned to India in 1882, working as a journalist for seven years and exploring Indian and Anglo-Indian life in poems and stories. His verses were collected in Departmental Ditties (1886) and his stories in Plain Tales from the Hills (1888) and other collections published before his return to England in 1889, where he found himself famous for his vigor and the freshness of his style and material. Kipling married an American, Caroline Balestier, in 1892 and they came to America to live until 1896. His best work was published in the 1890s and shortly thereafter: The Light That Failed (1890), Barrack-Room Ballads (1892), the Jungle Books (1894 and 1895), Captains Courageous (1897), and Kim (1901).

  Convict 2452: No record of the production of the play, Convict 2452, by G. W. Murdock, has yet been found.